RIP Morrie Turner: Comic strip artist, mentor and pride of Oakland

I was very sad to hear that comic strip artist Morrie Turner is gone. The pioneering creator of the “Wee Pals” comic strip died near his home in Sacramento on Saturday. He was 90.

We had been hearing for more than a year that Turner’s health was failing, but it seemed hard to believe. The Berkeley High graduate and longtime Oakland resident continued to draw his strip, even as local institutions including the San Francisco Library, Cartoon Art Museum and Children Fairyland honored his career in recent years. When Turner was with a crowd, he was more enthusiastic than most public figures half his age.

Nationally, Turner will likely be remembered as the first African-American cartoonist to draw a nationally syndicated strip, bringing humorous and honest racial dialogue into newspapers. (His “Soul Corner” on the right side of the strip often celebrated black heroes.)

Locally, I think artists and fans viewed him as more than that. After Charles Schulz died in 2000, Turner embraced his role as an elder statesman of Bay Area comic strip artists. He was a generous and gracious presence at WonderCon and other events, and younger talents were eager to absorb his wisdom. His work also generated pride in Oakland, where Turner’s strip reflected the city in a nuanced way that residents could understand.

A World War II veteran, Turner drew his first strip in the 1940s, then watched the popularity of “Wee Pals” expand rapidly in the late 1960s. “Wee Pals” included what he called a “rainbow” of characters, which Turner said reflected his upbringing in Oakland.

“All the kids were different,” Turner told the Chronicle in 2009. “White, Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, black. It was a rainbow. I didn’t know that wasn’t the way it was other places. Oakland was that way before the war. We were all equal. Nobody had any money.”

I spoke with “The K Chronicles” author Keith Knight this afternoon. The artist, who grew up in Massachusetts, said as a child he would ask his uncle to hold the comics section of the Boston Herald, so Knight could read “Wee Pals.” (Knight’s family got the Boston Globe, which didn’t carry the strip.)

“He was a gracious, nice and giving person. And he had this youthfulness.” Knight said. “He was able to retain that exuberance of being a kid, and keep that in his work.”

PETER HARTLAUB is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and founder/editor of The Big Event. He takes requests. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/peterhartlaub. Follow The Big Event on Facebook.